National Survey of Jails: Jurisdiction-Level and Jail-Level Data, 1986 (ICPSR 8871)
Version Date: Nov 4, 2005 View help for published
Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s)
United States Department of Justice. Office of Justice Programs. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Series:
https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08871.v1
Version V1
Summary View help for Summary
This data collection provides annual data on jail populations across the nation and examines the "spillover" effect on local jails resulting from the dramatic growth in federal and state prison populations. These data permit an assessment of the demands placed on correctional resources. Information is available on the number of inmates by sex, race, adult or juvenile status, reason being held, and cause of death.
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Geographic Coverage View help for Geographic Coverage
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Time Period(s) View help for Time Period(s)
Date of Collection View help for Date of Collection
Data Collection Notes View help for Data Collection Notes
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The Census Bureau used a nine-digit Government Identification number to identify each jail uniquely. This variable has been broken up into four different variables. Users of the data will have to combine these four variables in order to identify a particular jail.
Sample View help for Sample
Stratified random sample of local jails based on the 1983 Jail Census.
Universe View help for Universe
All locally administered county and municipal jails in the United States.
Data Source View help for Data Source
self-enumerated forms
Data Type(s) View help for Data Type(s)
HideOriginal Release Date View help for Original Release Date
1988-07-15
Version History View help for Version History
2018-02-15 The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented. The previous citation was:
- U.S. Dept. of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics. NATIONAL SURVEY OF JAILS: JURISDICTION-LEVEL AND JAIL-LEVEL DATA, 1986. Conducted by U.S. Dept. of Commerce, Bureau of the Census. ICPSR ed. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [producer and distributor], 1997. http://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR08871.v1
2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable, and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to reflect these additions.
1997-05-30 SAS and SPSS data definition statements for the logical record length version of the data have been added to this collection, and the codebook was reformatted to reinstate truncated lines.
1988-07-15 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:
- Standardized missing values.
- Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.
Notes
The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

This dataset is maintained and distributed by the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data (NACJD), the criminal justice archive within ICPSR. NACJD is primarily sponsored by three agencies within the U.S. Department of Justice: the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the National Institute of Justice, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
